NE Florida’s St. Johns County is one of the state's most rapidly-growing regions. In an effort to keep up with appraisals of new construction in the county and ensure compliance, the Property Appraiser has turned to drones to help in its assessment of value.

The aircraft are deployed for multiple reasons, including compliance with building permits and tracking lots that may soon be added to the tax rolls. In 2018, St. Johns County added 4,300 new residential properties to its tax base. UAVOS and Stratodynamics Aviation have completed flights tests of the HiDron earth observation platform called an altitude of 82,000 ft. HiDron also carried an atmospheric measurement system. The night-time flight lasted 4 hours, including the one-hour weather balloon launch period with an average climb rate at 22 ft./s. At release altitude the HiDron was 22 miles away from the launch site where it headed home and was above launch area at an altitude of 59,000 ft. The HiDron then glided near the home position with a descent rate much slower than a comparable parachute-borne instrument. The return flight home lasted about 3 hours. The French Directorate-General for Civil Aviation (DGAC), which regulates drones uses in France, has approved the use of a fully-automated drone
with no pilot, paving the way to new applications. The authorization was granted to Azur Drones' Skeyetech system, which takes off from a docking station and requires no remote pilot. Skeyetech drones can fly over private areas, Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS), day or night, in urban areas, under simple supervision of a remote operator. With this approval, the system will be directly operated by a security guard with no pilot certificate. All this -- and MORE in today's episode of Airborne-Unmanned!!!

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